Egyptian Islamists say police harass them at polls

CAIRO, June 11 (Reuters) Police prevented Egyptians from voting today in some areas where the opposition Muslim Brotherhood is strong, in the first elections under an amended constitution which makes life harder for the Islamists.

Muslim Brotherhood candidates complained that government agents beat them up inside polling stations and committed a range of electoral abuses including ballot stuffing in the parliamentary election.

Riot police encircled at least two polling stations in Ausim northwest of Cairo and a bystander said: ''It's because there are lots of Brotherhood supporters here.'' A police officer who asked not to be named cited ''national security''.

Police used the same method to reduce the Brotherhood vote in the northern coastal town of Baltim, where women in Islamic headscarves said police had turned them away, witnesses said.

''What freedom are they talking about?'' said Amani, a woman who refused to give her last name. ''No freedom! They won't allow us in,'' several women chanted.

Independent monitors said that sealing off polling stations was one of the most common electoral abuses by the government in the parliamentary elections of 2005, when the Brotherhood proved its status as the country's main opposition force.

The elections, for the less powerful upper house or Shoura Council, are a test case for constitutional and legislative changes which ban religious slogans and symbols -- seen as an attempt to drive the Islamists out of mainstream politics.

In many areas only a trickle of people bothered to vote, eyewitnesses said, but the Brotherhood's decision to challenge the ruling National Democratic Party (NDP) in 19 of the 88 seats made them more competitive than in previous years.

A Brotherhood candidate in Kafr el-Sheikh province, Ashraf el-Said, said police and others beat him up when he grabbed ballot papers from election officials who were filling them in on behalf of the ruling party.

''INFORMERS AND THUGS'' ''About 20 people -- police, security and the civil servants -- pounced on me. I have injuries on my hands, signs of biting, I was punched in the face and my clothes are a mess,'' he told Reuters by telephone.

Nagi Sakr, another Brotherhood candidate, said about 13 men he described as police informers and thugs attacked his party in a polling station in the Delta town of Zagazig.

''It seems they are trying to create any sort of problem to cripple the electoral process and to conceal vote rigging,'' the candidate told Reuters. An Interior Ministry spokesman said he had no information about the various incidents.

The Brotherhood said police had detained at least 160 of its organisers and election agents since voting started.

Sakr and a representative of independent candidate Said Abu Zeid said early voters saw evidence that ballot boxes had been stuffed when Zagazig Girls' Secondary School opened.

In an unrelated dispute, one man was killed in an exchange of gunfire between supporters of the NDP and of an independent candidate in the Nile Delta, police sources said.

The current elections are for 88 of the 176 elected seats in the upper house, which has wider powers under the constitutional amendments approved in March. The NDP has already won 11 of those seats because its candidates do not face any opposition.

On the eve of voting an Egyptian court denied a request by the electoral commission to disqualify eight of the Muslim Brotherhood's 19 candidates from standing.

Members of the ruling party had petitioned the commission to eliminate the Brotherhood candidates, alleging they had broken the law by campaigning under religious slogans.

But the Supreme Administrative Court ruled late yesterday that there was no conclusive evidence that the candidates or their supporters had used religious slogans.

REUTERS KK KN1750